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Eugene Jarecki's new movie The House I Live In should be seen by everybody, because it's the most important film about the drug war produced to date. Not merely a recitation of the history and statistics demonstrating clearly the pointlessness and tragic results of our nation's failed war on drugs, it also gives clarity to the ugly truth that what we really have is a war on drug users.

But even that important distinction isn't what fully elevates this film above the rest. That comes from Jarecki's exploration of the themes through a very personal and heartbreaking narrative about his own past, and how this personal connection leads him to explore a darker level of drug prohibition that leads to what I'm sure will be a controversial conclusion. Controversial, because of its ultimate truth and implications for our society.

In the film, Jarecki spoke with people on both sides of the war, including narcotics officers, judges, and prison guards (including Mike Carpenter, Chief of Security at Lexington Corrections Center in Oklahoma). What is amazing is the candor with which so many of them spoke regarding the futility of prohibition or at least of their own role in the process. There are likewise plenty of opponents of prohibition in the film, but Jarecki smartly lets most of the "pitch" come from the people working directly within the criminal justice system itself, so that the proponents of drug policy reform are providing background and narratives that highlight the broader truths and implications of the realities depicted by those in law enforcement and the judicial process. On the other side, we see numerous examples of drug users and drug dealers on the streets or at some stage of the justice system, and time after time their economic backgrounds and family life echo a similar refrain.

The point, I think, was to humanize the entire issue on both sides, and show how the system of prohibition is slowly dehumanizing and traumatizing everyone involved in some way or another. Not that the film suggests the police and judges suffer anywhere near what the suspects and convicts suffer -- rather, the film is exploring the theme that all of us are made less by a process that devalues other people, and those who are part of that system lose some small part of themselves to it as well. It is something that spreads from all of them outward to all of us, because the connections from one moment and one person to the next are not always obvious, but are very real.

This is where the personal narrative is perhaps most resonant. Nannie Jeter is a black woman who helped raise Eugene Jarecki when he was growing up. She loved him as if he were her own child, and he loved her, too. Jarecki knew her children and played with them, and felt very close to Jeter's family. What he didn't realize, however, is that when his own family moved to a new home farther away and asked Nannie Jeter to continue working for them, she had to leave her own children alone for long periods in order to do so. Jeter's children remained in an urban environment that eventually led to one son's involvement in drugs, progressing to addiction, and finally to his death. Jeter's sense of loss and personal guilt are gut wrenching, and must've been far more so for Jarecki, who was unaware of these facts until he started making the film.

Jeter escaped poverty and oppression in the south, only to head to the urban north where other forms of institutionalized poverty and racism and classism existed that would force her to make hard, terrible choices no mother should have to make. The segregation -- not legal, but structural and in urban planning, housing, and limited employment opportunities -- leads to a form of segregation of drug abuse and prohibition, one version for the wealthier people and another for those in inner cities and poor communities. It seems the odds favor tragedy in such circumstances, and Nannie Jeter's family fell victim to those odds.

And Jarecki himself clearly feels pain, shock, and probably an incredible sense of helplessness over his inability to go back and change the past, to be more aware of what was really happening to her family long ago while she was such a big part of his own life, to help stop the chain of events that would lead to her endless sense of sorrow and her immeasurable loss. This is the film's subtle and beautifully illustrated point about how this pointless war reaches out unnoticed at times to infect all of our lives, even if we don't realize it at the time.

I must praise the editing of his film, for piecing together these thematic strands in a way that lets them speak to one another as the film progresses, without getting tangled or confused. They weave in and out, laying a foundation that isn't obvious at first, but which becomes increasingly clear as the film builds toward a final revelation and statement of theme that -- by the time it arrives -- feels inevitable and yet caught on the tip of your mind until given voice in such a simple yet profound articulation of truth.

Prohibition has failed to even slow the use of illicit drugs in our society, just as it once failed to prevent consumption of alcohol. Indeed, the laws against drugs have been largely responsible for creation of an underground market that enriches violent gangs and organized crime, just as happened with alcohol. When a policy fails so miserably, exacerbating the problems it was supposedly intended to solve, then rational people will look for new solutions. If instead they increase the failed policy's application to ever worsening effect, then the film suggests we must ask whether the current outcomes are precisely the desired outcome after all.